The prosecution did nothing but try and besmirch her character when she could not appear. Have medical experts not shown-as Miss Morgan’s statement read into the record-that the girl suffered from many acute ailments? Still they want you to picture Miss Rappe as in perfect health, a giantess in strength, if you please. Would it have been possible in that little room for a man to have attacked a woman of that sort without everybody in the neighborhood knowing it or hearing it? And they try to tell you what a monster he was, this man who picked the girl up in his arms and yet could not carry her weight to another room a short distance without being assisted.
McNab walked, clad as always in a black suit with a vest, white shirt, and black tie. His balding gray head always with the same short stubble. He did not smile. He did not yell. He did not show emotion. He walked and talked to the jury as if working on things in his own mind, the way they should be thinking, too. So many questions. So many holes.
Throughout the length and breadth of this trial there has been hawked the name of Bambina Maude Delmont. Why was she not put on the stand? Why has she not been produced, this complaining witness of theirs? Why has the prosecution resorted to the spook evidence of dimly marked doors summoning their spirits of evil out of the woodwork, or through the manipulation of an expert holding a microscope to the floor, instead of producing human beings in flesh and blood who could have shed light upon this case? There has been more processing of witnesses than process of law. The district attorney has maintained his witnesses in private prisons-a thing I had believed to be abolished at the time of Little Dorrit.
Roscoe started to laugh. Minta shushed him.
And I would like to know why a witness who perhaps is believed to be so untruthful that he or she has be to kept in custody is then brought before a jury to imperil the liberty of any man? Miss Prevon was kept in this so-called Hall of Justice all night without food or drink or time for a quiet smoke. She was harassed and threatened with jail unless she was willing to sign a declaration for the grand jury that Virginia Rappe, moaning upon the bed, had explained, “I am dying. I am dying. He killed me.”
McNab smiled.
All that Zey Prevost heard Virginia Rappe say was “I am dying”-he shouted this to the jury. And they finally compromised with her and let her alone after she signed a statement that Virgina Rappe had explained, “I am dying. He hurt me.”
U’Ren protested that this was not based on a shred of testimony and that by morning he would produce reams showing that… McNab let him finish and continued.
I will show you, therefore, why it was that Mr. Arbuckle was wise in not making any statement. They would have processed the witnesses. Mr. Heinrich, the fingerprint expert, would have suddenly discovered that he and Salome had been under the carpet while Mr. Arbuckle and Virginia Rappe were alone in room 1219 and they would have produced a horde of chambermaids, with their eyes at every crack, their ears in every keyhole, to substantiate him.
Roscoe stood. He smiled. He straightened his tie, rubbing his hands together.
“Better?” Minta asked. She placed her black hat, the one with the veil of beads, back on her head, half of her face shielded.
“Yes.”
“Can you sleep now?” Minta asked.
He nodded. “Better.”
“I COULDN’T SLEEP,” Sam said. “I walked. I’ve walked for a while.”
Daisy opened the door to her apartment. Her kimono hung open past her breasts and clear down to her navel. She smiled when she caught his gaze. “Why don’t you come in.”
“Nice flat.”
“It’s cozy, on a gal’s pay.”
“How sure are you that the stash is LaPeer’s?”
“F. Forrest Mitchell doesn’t make mistakes.”
“You make him sound like God.”
“He’s more sure of himself.”
“Can I take a seat?”
“Kick your shoes off.”
Sam found an old leather chair, a craned reading lamp. A window overlooking Turk Street.
“Didn’t mean to ambush you like this.”
“I’m not ambushed,” she said, sitting on top of a coffee table, holding the front of her silk robe. She wore no paint on her face, white blond hair brushed flat back and behind her ears, looking fresh and clean. She smelled like good soap.
“I found it. The money.”
She smiled. “Well, I guess I should be pleased, but I’m not. Just make sure they spell your name right. Did I tell you about that?”
“I didn’t tell ’em.”
“The newsboys?”
“Nobody,” Sam said. “I didn’t tell a soul. I left it where it lay. In the shaft of an engine-room duct, snaked through the guts of the Sonoma in a fire hose.”
Daisy dropped her head into her hands and pushed her hair back over her ears, combing it back, her face hidden in profile. “I need a smoke. You want coffee?”
“We can leave. You can leave.”
“What about the money?”
“We can decide when we’re at sea,” Sam said. “Don’t you understand? It’s a fresh start. And if it’s on LaPeer’s filthy dime, no tears from me. My bum lungs can heal up in Australia. You can get the city grime off you and tell Mr. F. Forrest Mitchell to take a flying leap. You know what I mean?”
“Kinda.”
“Sometimes it’s that way. It can come at you like a sucker punch and it’s all so clear that life’s a sham. It’s a long con and you walk through it like asleep, halfway in a dream, and it takes something big to make you wise up and see the world for what it is. Let’s get the hell out of here.”
“What about your family?”
“The girls are better off without me,” he said. “I’ll disappoint them in the end.”
“But you won’t disappoint me?”
“I’ll disappoint you, too. But let’s have some fun first.”
“What time does she sail?”
“Tomorrow. At midnight.”
Daisy raised her head and smiled at him. “Aren’t you gonna kiss me or something?”
“Or something.”
33
Roscoe knew, could feel it, even before the judge assembled all the lawyers and the jurists, what the word was going to be. They’d been in there forty-four hours, taking breaks only to eat and to sleep back at the Hotel Manx, filing past him each time, no one looking him in the eye except for a couple boys, riding off in that little ivory bus and returning for two days straight. It was about noon on Sunday and with the doors to the Hall open you could hear the church bells ringing across the city. Roscoe had been sitting with Minta and Ma in the first row behind the defense table. McNab, who was in the judge’s chambers, looked at Roscoe, crooking his finger at him to come back to the table. The bailiffs spread out, doors were open, the jury being ushered back into the box. McNab leaned in and whispered, “Louderback is shaking them loose.”
“What’d we get?”
“Ten to two,” McNab said. “The second one gave in because they couldn’t stand the pressure anymore.”
“Who was the holdout?”
“Mrs. Hubbard,” McNab said, whispering again. “Hadn’t changed her vote since Friday.”
Roscoe didn’t say a thing, but there was a rock in his stomach, a feeling of being on a long, loose slope, trying to find ground with your feet but only getting mud. He smiled, straightened his tie. He folded his hands across each other, catching Fritze’s eye, the foreman, who Roscoe knew had been a good egg since the start, and Fritze shook his head sadly and opened his palms.
The titian-haired Amazon, Mrs. Hubbard, kept her head dropped, an enormous black hat on her head. Her chin down to her chest, refusing to look at anyone, as Louderback asked Roscoe to rise and explained that the jury was hung and that he saw no other course of action but to let them loose and call a new one.